Exhibition: ‘The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker’ at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Exhibition dates: 15th January – 5th June, 2011

Many thankx to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
City Whispers, Philadelphia
1983
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: Atlantic City/New York City
1969/1968
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: New York City
1968
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Double Frames: Philadelphia
1965, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Double Frames: Philadelphia
1965, printed 1972
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: Philadelphia
1968, printed 2002
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Pictus Interruptus: Philadelphia
1977
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Works by Ray K. Metzker, one of the most original and influential photographers of the last half century, will be on view from Jan. 15 to June 5, 2011, at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker will reveal Metzker’s ability to turn ordinary subjects, including the urban experience and nature, into the visual poetry of the finely crafted black-and-white print.

At the age of nearly 80, Metzker is greatly admired for his passionate engagement with both photography and the world. He has explored the use of high contrast and selective focus, the potentials of multiple and composite images, and the infinite gradations of daylight, from dazzling white to inky shadow.

This is great and lasting work – the very best of a classic form of American modernism, said Keith F. Davis, senior curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins. Metzker has led a life of deep devotion to understanding the potential, challenge and pleasure of photographic seeing. In so doing, he has transcended any simple notion of technical experimentation or formalism to illuminate a vastly larger human realm – one of uncertainty, isolation and vulnerability, as well as of unexpected beauty, grace and transcendence.

Thanks to a major gift from the Hall Family Foundation, the Nelson-Atkins now has the largest holding of Metzker’s work (92 prints) in the United States.

Born in Milwaukee, Wis., in 1931, Metzker first took up photography as a teenager. After two years in the army, he entered the graduate program at the Institute of Design, Chicago, in the fall of 1956. His professors, Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, were acclaimed artists and inspiring teachers, and they emphasised the medium’s remarkable range and visual potential. Metzker’s artistic vision grew from a union of ideas: the realities of modern life, the medium’s myriad technical possibilities, and the quest for a distinctly individual vision.

Metzker has lived and worked in Philadelphia since 1962, and as he approaches the age of 80, he continues to make new pictures there.

The photographs in the exhibition feature examples from all his major series, including his earliest mature work from Chicago (1957-1959); photographs from an extended visit to Europe (1960-1961); the street activity, people, and structures of Philadelphia (from 1962 to the present); beachgoers at the New Jersey shore, Sand Creatures (1968-1977); the starkness of the Southwestern light and landscape, New Mexico (1971-1972); and the lush mysteries of the natural realm, in his Landscapes (1985-1996) from Italy, France and the United States.

The exhibition features a host of innovative and ingenious approaches to photography, including the use of the double image, Double Frame (1964-1966) and Couplets (1968-1969); single works created from an entire roll of film, Composites (1964-1966); and the creative control of focus in both Pictus Interruptus (1976-1980) and Landscapes (1985-1996).

Press release from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago
1957
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago
1959, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1963, printed 1986
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Man in Canoe
1961
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1964, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Composite: Atlantic City
1966
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Composites: Night at the Terminal
about 1966
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of Lawrence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1981
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1964
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City, MO 64111

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

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Review: ‘Penelope Davis: Smack’ at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 12th May – 11th June 2011

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

A beautiful, hypnotic installation; one outstanding photograph (out of four); and a distance between elements, installation and photographs that, in the gallery space, seemed almost insurmountable.

The installation is intoxicating, taking the viewer into a world outside of reality – inverted, convoluted creatures “after the things of nature” (me ta physika) – in this case mobile phones, camera lenses and electrical plugs and leads, the skin of these objects flayed, extruded and made in silicone. These filamentary ‘jellies’ are wondrous. As Susan Fereday observes they are like detached skin, which “can become a kind of negative, a reversed memory, a perverse relic of its previously animated form … Detached, distraught, dangling. But there is also something slippery in these forms, something visceral, uterine, umbilical …”. The installation reminded me of the chthonian nature of the womb, our birth and that first gasp of breath – do you remember? was it all that you ever needed?

Water, blood, the detritus of birth and the emergence of life into light. Floating, gliding to the surface.

Only one photograph, Fluther (2011, below), approaches this detachment. A beauty it is too. The other three photographs felt more like addendum than adding anything further to the work and failed to achieve a ‘presence’ when compared to the installation. I suspect one of the problems was the scale of the three photographs and the fact that they are so tightly framed. Evidence of this can be seen in the installation shot below, the photograph of the blue ‘jellie’ so tightly prescribed and enclosed so as to not allow any interaction between installation and photograph. Perhaps making the photographs slightly larger and face mounting them behind PlexiGlass would have softened the edges of the photographs allowing a malleable (meta)physical air to breathe across the gallery space.

The highlight is the installation. Go and see, it is well worth the visit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Nellie Castan Gallery for allowing me to publish the text and the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs courtesy and © the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery.

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

Stretched Skin

“Where my inside meets the outside, where my body’s surfaces curve or stretch, dimple or fold, they create sensory cavities that are designed to respond to the outside world, at least to some degree. More difficult to resolve is the place that’s made when my inside turns out and there and no pickets to hide the private things – things I don’t want to look at myself, things too fleshy for the world to see, too soft, raw and pink to be exposed. Bringing the inside out, I am turned outside in and where does that leave me? In the edgeless space of the everyday saturated by grief.

Penelope Davis’ ‘jellies’ make me think about how a person’s skin can record their body’s history through marks – scars, distentions, swellings, bruises and wrinkles – just as a photograph can record a body’s outward appearance through light. We could say that skin is an index to its experiences, but it is not iconic. Skin does not reproduce the body’s image the way a photograph does, unless the skin is lifted to make a new shape. Then, just as hot wind can suck the life out of a fallen leaf and turn its veins into a street map, or sun and sea can batter a plastic bottle into a miraculous Marian figurine, detached skin can become a kind of negative, a reversed memory, a perverse relic of its previously animated form.

That’s what the ‘jellies’ look like: skin, turned inside out, photographic skin turned outside in. Detached, distraught, dangling. But there is also something slippery in these forms, something visceral, uterine, umbilical …”

Except from pamphlet text by artist and writer Susan Fereday, March 2011

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Fluther
2011
Type C photograph
120 x 100cm

In Smack, Penelope Davis’ latest body of work, jellyfish-like forms have been assembled from a collage of components. These elements include the detritus of contemporary technologies. Among these are cameras, computer parts, mobile phones, wiring and electrical parts. Organic source materials such as leaves and seaweed (many sourced from the community garden plots surrounding Davis’ studio) are cast and intermixed with these forms. After being cast in silicone, the works are sewn together to create forms that resemble jellyfish. The resulting swarm – or smack, as the collective noun is properly known – is displayed as an installation of semi transparent, suspended forms.

A selection of these ‘jellies’ have also been placed in the digital scanner and ‘photographed’. Some digital post-production work is also employed to create large scale photographic images.

The materials and techniques used allow Penelope Davis to play with some of the procedures and assumptions central to photographic practice. The central motif of the jellyfish is a vehicle to examine critical contemporary issues of consumption and environmental degradation.

Text from the Nellie Castan website [Online] Cited 28/05/2011 no longer available online

Installation view of the exhibition Penelope Davis: Smack at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne showing at right the photograph Bloom (2011, below)

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Bloom
2011
Type C photograph
120 x 100cm

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
'Smack' installation 2011 (detail)

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation (detail)
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

Nellie Castan Gallery

This gallery has now closed

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Exhibition: ‘When the Curtain Falls: Margarita Broich – Photographs’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 18th March – 30th May 2011

Many thankx to the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Vaginal Davis
Performance, Rising Stars, Falling Stars, Arsenal, Berlin, 13.11.2010
2010
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Martin Wuttke with poodle Taxi
Gretchens Faust, Berliner Ensemble, 11.05.2009
2009
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Veronica Ferres, Unter Bauern, 1.9.2008' 2008

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Veronica Ferres
Unter Bauern, 01.09.2008
2008
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Melanie and Daniela Reichert
Unter Bauern, 27.08.2008
2008
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Rosebud, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 21-12-2001' 2001

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Margarita Broich
Rosebud, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 21-12-2001
2001
© Margarita Broich

As an actress Margarita Broich is one of the big names, but it may come as a surprise to many that she is also a photographer. For the first time the Martin-Gropius-Bau is showing an exhibition of her work consisting of over 60 portraits of her fellow artists, including Ben Becker, Kate Winslet, Veronika Ferres, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Christoph Schlingensief, Thomas Quasthoff and many more. Margarita Broich has captured those fleeting moments when the actor sheds the role in the intervals or a few minutes after the end of a performance. The role can still be discerned on the features of the players when they are still surrounded by the world of scenery and mirrors but not acting any more. They have been sought out in changing rooms, theatre foyers, or with the make-up artist, taking off their make-up while still surrounded by the tools of their transformation.

Broich portrays the artists with the instinct of a colleague. Her photographs capture famous artists from her circle of acquaintances at those moments when they are returning from the stage after playing their role. However matter-of-fact the situation of the subject may occasionally appear, each photograph has its own charm. The beholder is granted glimpses of scenes that must be among the most intimate in show business: whether they show Martin Wuttke with a blonde, Andy Warhol mane and his poodle, Taxi, smoking a cigarette after a performance of “Gretchens Faust”, or Klaus Maria Brandauer at the end of a 10-hour Wallenstein epic, sitting on a stool with a bottle of beer, the snapshots are full of tension.

Born in Neuwied in 1960, Margarita Broich initially studied photo design in Dortmund and worked as a theatrical photographer at the Bochum Schauspielhaus (Theatre) under Claus Peymann, before studying dramatic art herself at Berlin’s College of Arts. Since then she has appeared in numerous German-language stage performances and television dramas, working with such directors as Claus Peymann, Robert Wilson and, earlier, with Christoph Schlingensief.

Text from the Martin-Gropius-Bau website [Online] Cited 26/05/2011 no longer available online

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Kate Winslet
The Reader, 20-04-2008
2008
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Wallenstein, Berliner Ensemble in the Preuss-Halle, Berlin, 09-06-2007
2007
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Ben Becker
Jedermann, Salzburger Festspiele, 17-08-2010
2010
© Margarita Broich

Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
Corner Stresemannstr. 110
10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30 254 86-0

Opening hours:
Wednesday to Monday 10 – 19 hrs
Tuesday closed

Martin-Gropius-Bau website

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Exhibition: ‘You Are Here: Architecture and Experience’ at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Exhibition dates: 5th March – 29th May 2011

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Ballettzentrum Hamburg III
2000
Chromogenic print
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

Inspired curating conjoins the monumental, classicist purity of Höfer with the picturesque, dystopian (dis)quietude of Gaillard in an exhibition that investigates our relationship to buildings and their environments and their relationship to us – the ‘i’ in our histor-i-city.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Carnegie Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980)
Belief in the Age of Disbelief (L’arbre incliné/étape VI)
2005
Etching
36 x 47cm
© Cyprien Gaillard
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin, London

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo XI
2005
Chromogenic print
81 3/8 x 71 7/8 in.
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

Carnegie Museum of Art presents the powerful work of two contemporary artists – Candida Höfer and Cyprien Gaillard – who explore architectural environments and how they influence experiences and perceptions of the world.

“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” With that simple but profound insight, Winston Churchill conveyed people’s complex relationship to architecture: The physical form of a building is controlled by its designer, but the impact a constructed environment has can be unpredictable, emotional, and even visceral. That dynamic is evident in the upcoming exhibition You Are Here: Architecture and Experience, which brings together the photographs of German artist Candida Höfer and a video and etchings by French artist Cyprien Gaillard. Both artists express the formative power of architecture in different but complementary ways, according to Tracy Myers, curator of architecture at the Heinz Architectural Center and organiser of the exhibition.

Candida Höfer’s lush colour photographs of ornate historical and contemporary interior spaces are usually devoid of humans, yet they reveal details that draw the viewer into a consideration of what each place means. Höfer’s photographs usually focus on spaces of cultural and social activity. Printed very large (from about 4 x 4 feet to a massive 6 x 8 feet), the 17 photographs in You Are Here represent the range of Höfer’s work in terms of scale, point of view, building type, and geographical location.

By contrast, Cyprien Gaillard’s video Desniansky Raion and his meticulously detailed etchings probe the human legacy of Modernist high-rise housing blocks. Constructed after World War II throughout the United States, Europe, and the Eastern Bloc to provide decent housing, these buildings often became warehouses for the poor and incubators of crime and antisocial behaviours.

Named for an administrative district in Kiev, Desniansky Raion poignantly reflects on the gap between the utopian Modernist aspiration for universal housing and the banal reality that instead prevailed. It comprises three parts. In the first section, weekend fight clubs of 50 or 100 people face off against each other in a pugilistic ritual set against the backdrop of housing towers in St. Petersburg, Russia. The second part shows the implosion of a similar tower in Meaux, a small city near Paris; the demolition of the building was treated by the city government as a literal spectacle, with a light show and fireworks preceding the destruction. The final third is a very long panning aerial shot of seemingly endless ranks of virtually identical housing blocks in Kiev, Ukraine. The video is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Koudlam, a young musician born in the Ivory Coast. Also featured are six etchings by Gaillard, collectively titled Belief in the Age of Disbelief, in which the Modernist housing tower is placed in classic picturesque landscapes.

“Gaillard’s video packs a powerful and direct emotional punch: each time I view it, I experience physically the anticipation that ebbs and flows through the course of the work,” said Myers. “By contrast, Höfer’s photographs embody a kind of quietude that encourages slow, sustained exploration of the meaning that builds through accumulation of detail. But both works are equally affecting and bring the viewer with compelling intensity into the realm of architectural experience. Höfer and Gaillard capture the constant oscillation between what we make of our buildings, and what they make of us.”

Artists’ Biographies

Candida Höfer has been creating photographs for more than 30 years. Born in Eberswalde, Germany, in 1944, she studied with Berndt Becher and is identified with a group of German artists – Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte, and Thomas Struth – best known for their unsentimental photographs of architecture, landscapes, and urban developments. Höfer has made interiors her focus.

Cyprien Gaillard, born in Paris in 1980 and currently based in Berlin, explores contemporary landscapes and buildings in a variety of media, including video, painting, and etchings. Much of his work is concerned with the legacy and inheritance of buildings and landscapes that are left to us, and the ways in which we interact with them.

Press release from the Carnegie Museum of Art website

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980) 'Desniansky Raion' video still, 2007

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980)
Desniansky Raion
2007
Video still
DVD, 30 min.
Edition of 5
© Cyprien Gaillard. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin, London

Cyprien Gaillard – Desniansky Raion, Part 1, 2008

The video takes place in a parking lot of a drab housing complex in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he witness two large groups of men – one mostly wearing red shirts and the other blue – slowly walking towards each other. Set by Gaillard to the hypnotic electronic beats of French composer Koudlam’s I See you All, the video shows the colour-coordinated groups marching in loose formation, reminiscent of ancient armies confronting each other on some distant battlefield. Suddenly, signal flares billowing smoke arc through the air and the two groups come together, clashing in flurry of fists – a breathtaking display of raw physical violence set against the stark backdrop of the housing block. As the sounds of Koudlam’s pulsing music draw louder and more urgent, the furious hand-to-hand combat intensifies while bodies of the fallen lay strewn on the pavement. Before long, the blue faction beats a hasty retreat, only to regroup moments later on one side of a nearby pedestrian bridge. The two sides come together again, this time clashing on the impossibly narrow span of the footbridge. The blue group is once more chased off, and the victors in red erupt in victorious celebration.

Text from the YouTube website

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980)
Belief in the Age of Disbelief (Banja Luca)
2005
Etching
36 x 47cm
© Cyprien Gaillard
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin, London

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia Venezia I
2003
Chromogenic print
60 15/16 x 73 in
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Palacio Nacional de Mafra VII
2006
Chromogenic print
61 x 69 1/8 in
Collection Zibby and Andrew Right, New York

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Musee du Louvre Paris XX
2005
Chromogenic print
78 3/4 x 95 5/8 in
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'You Are Here: Architecture and Experience' at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Installation views of the exhibition You Are Here: Architecture and Experience at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Palacio Real Madrid V
2000
Chromogenic print
47 x 47 in. (119.3 x 119.3cm)

Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-4080
Phone: 412.622.3131

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

Carnegie Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, 1848-1875’ at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Exhibition dates: 8th March – 29th May 2011

Julia Margaret Cameron – you are one of my heroes!

Many thankx to the Musée d’Orsay for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Henry White (British, 1819-1903) 'Ferns and brambles' 1856

Henry White (British, 1819-1903)
Fougères et ronces (Ferns and brambles)
1856
Albumen print
19.1 x 24.1cm
Collection particulière
© Droits réservés

John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900)
Fribourg
1859
Pencil, ink, watercolour and gouache on paper
22.5 x 28.7cm
London, The British Museum
© The Trustees of The British Museum. All rights reserved

Frederick Crawley, under the direction of John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900) 'Fribourg, Switzerland, Palm Street and Berne Bridge' about 1854 or 1856

Frederick Crawley, under the direction of John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900)
Fribourg, Suisse, Rue de la Palme et Pont de Berne (Fribourg, Switzerland, Palm Street and Berne Bridge)
about 1854 or 1856
Daguerréotype
11.5 x 15.1cm
Angleterre, Courtesy K. and J. Jacobson
© Droits réservés

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Bolton Abbey' 1854

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Bolton Abbey, West window
1854
Albumen print
25.1 x 34.5cm
Bradford, National Media Museum
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

John William Inchbold (English, 1830-1888) 'La Chapelle de Bolton Abbey' 1853

John William Inchbold (English, 1830-1888)
La Chapelle de Bolton Abbey (The Vault of Bolton Abbey)
1853
Oil on canvas
50 x 68.4cm
Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery
© Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901)
Fading Away
1858
Albumen print
28.8 x 52.1cm
Bradford, The Royal Photographic Society Collection au National Media Museum.
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901)
She Never Told her Love
1857
Albumen print
18.6 x 23.3cm
Paris, musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

Consumed by the passion of unrequited love, a young woman lies suspended in the dark space of her unrealised dreams in Henry Peach Robinson’s illustration of the Shakespearean verse “She never told her love,/ But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek” (Twelfth Night II,iv,111-13). Although this picture was exhibited by Robinson as a discrete work, it also served as a study for the central figure in his most famous photograph, Fading Away, of 1858.

Purportedly showing a young consumptive surrounded by family in her final moments, Fading Away was hotly debated for years. On the one hand, Robinson was criticised for the presumed indelicacy of having invaded the death chamber at the most private of moments. On the other, those who recognised the scene as having been staged and who understood that Robinson had created the picture through combination printing (a technique that utilised several negatives to create a single printed image) accused him of dishonestly using a medium whose chief virtue was its truthfulness.

While addressing the moral and literary themes that Robinson believed crucial if photography were to aspire to high art, this picture makes only restrained use of the cloying sentimentality and showy technical artifice that often characterise this artist’s major exhibition pictures. Perhaps intended to facilitate the process of combination printing, the unnaturally black background serves also to envelop the figure in palpable melancholia.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 27/01/2020

Frederick Pickersgill (English, 1820-1900)
Sunshine and Shade
1859
Albumen print
16.4 x 19.4cm
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum.
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

The historian and art critic, John Ruskin, had a great influence in Great Britain not only on the Pre-Raphaelite movement created in 1848, but on the development of early photography in the 1850s. The leading Pre-Raphaelite painters, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Ford Madox Brown and their followers, wished to change the pictorial conventions laid down by the Royal Academy, and in order to demonstrate the transformations in modern life, invented a radically new idiom marked by bright colours and clarity of detail.

Pre-Raphaelite painters and photographers frequently made similar choices of subjects, and the photographers, particularly Julia Margaret Cameron, David Wilkie Wynfield and Lewis Carroll, were often had close links with the painters.

When painting landscapes, the Pre-Raphaelite artists answered Ruskin’s call, meticulously observing nature in order to capture every nuance of detail. For their part, photographers, such as Roger Fenton, Henry White, William J. Stillman and Colonel Henry Stuart Wortley, experimented with the new process of wet plate collodion negatives that allowed much greater image detail, and achieved similar effects. Although highly impressed at first by the daguerreotype, which enabled the eye to see tiny, overlooked details, Ruskin was nonetheless still very critical of landscape photography, which could not reproduce the colours of nature and in particular of the sky. This failing also gave rise to a major debate amongst photography critics.

In portraiture, there were clear links between the painted portraits of Watts and Cameron’s photographic portraits. By using special lenses and photographing her models in close-up, Cameron, achieved, with a glass negative, exactly the opposite effect to the clear image advocated by Ruskin, and her work was distinctive for the breadth of relief and contour, as well as the compositions evoking Raphael’s paintings, also a source of inspiration for Watts.

The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti repeatedly drew and painted Jane Morris, a model with whom he was infatuated, and he asked Robert Parsons to produce a series of photographs, under his personal direction, which captured the fascinating presence of the young woman as effectively as his own paintings.

Just like the Pre-Raphaelite painters, Victorian photographers would turn to religious or historical subjects, finding a shared inspiration in the poems of Dante, Shakespeare and possibly Byron, and above all in the Arthurian legend made popular once more by Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate. From a formal point of view, Millais’ Ophelia, one of his most successful paintings, was a source for Henry Peach Robinson’s photograph, The Lady of Shalott, even though it had a different theme.

Finally, Pre-Raphaelite painters and Victorian photographers both liked to present scenes from modern life with a moralising undertone: hence She Never Told Her Love, a photograph by Robinson that was very successful when exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1858, William Holman Hunt’s painting, Awakening of Conscience, and Rossetti’s Found, a painting depicting a countryman who comes across his former sweetheart, now a prostitute in the city.

In the 1880s, Pre-Raphaelite painting would be transformed, with artists and writers like William Morris, Burne-Jones, Whistler and Oscar Wilde, into a very different movement concerned only with the cult of beauty and rejecting Ruskin’s concept of art as something moral or useful. British photographers, however, inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites would inspire the Pictorialist movement that flourished in the 1890s, encouraged by the writings of Henry Peach Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson, extolling artistic photography.

Press release from the Musée d’Orsay website

James Sinclair 14th Earl of Caithness (Scottish, 1821-1881) 'Weston Avenue, Warwickshire' c. 1860

James Sinclair 14th Earl of Caithness (Scottish, 1821-1881)
Avenue à Weston, Warwickshire (Weston Avenue, Warwickshire)
c. 1860
Albumen print
23 x 18.3cm
New York, Courtesy George Eastman House Rochester
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) 'The sunflower' 1866-1870

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
Le tournesol (The sunflower)
1866-1870
Albumen print
35.2 x 24.3cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Fond Paul Mellon
© National Gallery of Art, Washington

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909), under the direction of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882) 'Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti' summer 1865

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909), under the direction of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)
Jane Morris posant dans la maison de Rossetti (Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti)
Summer 1865
Modern print
22.6 x 17.5cm
London, Victoria and Albert Museum
© V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum, London

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909) 'Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti' summer 1865

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909)
Jane Morris posant dans le jardin de la maison de Rossetti (Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti)
Summer 1865
Albumen print
Private collection
© Tim Hurst Photography

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)
Jane Morris, the blue silk dress
1868
Oil on canvas
110.5 x 90.2cm
Londres, The Society of Antiquaries
© Kelmscott Manor Collection, by Permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Caroll) (English, 1832-1898)
Amy Hughes
1863
Austin, The University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center, Gernsheim Collection
© Droits réservés

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
Maud
1875
Charcoal print
30 x 25cm
Paris, musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

Sir John Everett Millais (British, 1829-1896)
A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge
1851-1852
Oil on canvas
91.4 x 62.2cm
Collection Makins
© The Makins Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

Sir Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898)
Princess Sabra (The King’s Daughter)
1865-1866
Oil on canvas
105 x 61cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
And Enid Sang
1874
Print on albumen paper, collodion glass negative, laminated on cardboard
35 x 28cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)

Musée d’Orsay
62, rue de Lille
75343 Paris Cedex 07
France

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 9.30am – 6pm
Thursdays 9.30am – 9.45pm
Closed on Mondays

Musée d’Orsay website

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Exhibition: ‘Kurt Kranz: Programming of Beauty’ at the Bauhaus Dessau, Berlin

Exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Kurt Kranz
19th November 2010 – 29th May 2011

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Perspective
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Lars Lohrisch / Abdruck mit Genehmigung der Kunsthalle

One of the great pleasures of publishing this archive is that I get to research the life of an artist whose work I never knew before. Kurt Kranz is one such artist.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the the Bauhaus Dessau for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997) 'Vereinsamung' Dessau 1930

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Vereinsamung (Isolation)
Dessau
1930
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen

Installation photograph of Programming of Beauty by Kurt Kranz at the Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Versinkende (Sinking one)
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Persischer Garten (Persian garden)
1970
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Uwe Jacobshagen

The Bauhaus Dessau dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to the painter, graphic designer and photographer Kurt Kranz to mark his 100th birthday. In 1930, the then twenty-year-old lithographer came from Bielefeld to study at the Bauhaus Dessau, where he soon established himself as a pioneer of serial and generative methods. With his avant-garde work, Kranz’s methods anticipated those of later generations.

Inspired by a lecture by László Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Kranz came to the Bauhaus Dessau in April 1930. In Walter Peterhans’s photography class, Kranz began to experiment with photographic techniques and created some of the most striking abstract picture series to emerge from the Bauhaus. Alienated and abstracted faces and hands appear repeatedly in his dynamic picture series. These show Kranz’s early affinity for film as, page for page, the abstract forms interact with one another. Kranz drafted his first concepts for abstract films at the Bauhaus, although he was first able to realise these decades later in 1972.

The exhibition to mark the artist’s 100th birthday shows works from Kranz’s Bauhaus years and his later work as an advertising graphic designer, and focuses on a selection of his large picture cycles. Strikingly diverse leporellos dating from the 1960s onwards take centre stage, as do the so-called “Matrix-und Schiebebilder”

Text from the Bauhaus Dessau website

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Selbstporträt en face (objektives Foto) (Self-portrait with face (objective photo))
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Rasterfoto (Raster photograph)
1932
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997) 'Schwarz : Weiß' (Black: White) 1928-29

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Schwarz: Weiß (Black: White)
1928-1929
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Privatbesitz

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Schrift Entwurf aus Satzmaterial (Writing draft from sentence material)
Dessau
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Aus der Serie “Sieben Schritte zum symmetrischen Oval” (From the series “Seven steps to the symmetrical Oval”)
1982
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Foto: Uwe Jacobshagen

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Augenreihe (Eye rows)
1931 (montiert 1981) (1931 (1981 install))
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen

Kurt Kranz (German, 1910-1997)
Mund-Reihen (Mouth rows)
1931
Ingrid Kranz / Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
Leihgeber: Kunsthalle Bremen
Foto: Ingrid Kranz, Wedel

Bauhaus Dessau
Gropiusalle 38, Dessau, Germany

Opening hours:
Tue – Sun 10am – 6pm

Bauhaus Dessau website

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Exhibition: ‘Jeanloup Sieff’ at Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Exhibition dates: 19th February – 22nd May 2011

Curator: Anna Tellgren

Many thankx to the Moderna Museet for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Ballet, Paris Opera, 1960
1960
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Carolyn Carlson, Paris, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 1971
1971
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Catherine Deneuve, dress Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, ‘Vogue Italia’
1969
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Ma Fille Sonia, Paris
1985
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

The French photographer Jeanloup Sieff (1933-2000) is a legend in fashion photography and one of the most prominent photographers of his generation. Opening on 19 February, Moderna Museet in Stockholm presents the first Nordic solo exhibition of Jeanloup Sieff.

Jeanloup Sieff began photographing in the early 1950s, as a contemporary of Helmut Newton and David Bailey, belonging to the generation succeeding Irving Penn. In the course of a long career, his photography spanned from fashion, advertising and portraits to reportage and landscapes. His images are often sensual and elegant, and in the 1960s he was much in demand as a fashion photographer, especially in the USA, where he lived for some years in New York. As a respected fashion photographer, Sieff had assignments for magazines such as Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour and Jardin des Modes. Sieff also engaged in commercial photography, including promotion campaigns for Chanel and Revlon and the first Yves Saint Laurent fragrance.

“In his fashion and advertising photographs the models are characteristically close to the pictorial surface, an effect achieved by using a wide-angle lens. His working method was based on physical and emotional closeness. This lack of distance makes his images exciting and visually interesting,” says Anna Tellgren, curator.

In the course of his career, Jeanloup Sieff took several now classic portraits of prominent fashion icons, including Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and Jane Birkin. French cultural celebrities such as François Truffaut, Catherine Deneuve and Serge Gainsbourg have also been portrayed by Sieff. Several of these portraits will be featured in the exhibition at Moderna Museet. Jeanloup Sieff was deeply fascinated by dance, another of his frequent subjects. He got to know Rudolf Nureyev just after he had defected to the West, and collaborated with the American dancer and choreographer Carolyn Carlson. The exhibition at Moderna Museet presents a selection of 53 pictures from Sieff’s photographic oeuvre, with an emphasis on his dance photography.

“He was interested in the dancers as artists, and the actual struggle during rehearsal to get their bodies to perform more or less impossible movements. His dance photographs are fascinating because they really convey the smell of sweat and the shuffling sound of dance shoes, which is exactly what he was after,” Anna Tellgren, the curator of the exhibition, commented.

Text from the Moderna Museet website

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Claire Motte, Paris
1960
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Larrio Exon, Paris
1976
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Harper’s Bazaar, Palm Beach
1964
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
East Hampton in Winter
1965
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Autoportrait, Paris
1978
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Opéra de Paris, 1988
1988
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
'La Maison Noire' 1965

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Judy, New York, 1965
1965
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Yves Saint-Laurent, Vogue Italie
1969
Gelatin silver print
15 7/10 × 11 4/5 in (40 × 30cm)
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Jeanloup Sieff (French, 1933-2000)
Harper’s Bazaar, Hollywood, 1962
1962
Gelatin silver print
© The Estate of Jeanloup Sieff, Paris

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Moderna Museet is ten minutes away from Kungsträdgården, and twenty minutes from T-Centralen or Gamla Stan. Walk past Grand Hotel and Nationalmuseum on Blasieholmen, opposite the Royal Palace. After crossing the bridge to Skeppsholmen, continue up the hill. The entrance to Moderna Museet and Arkitekturmuseet is on the left-hand side.

Opening hours:
Tuesday and Friday 10 – 20
Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday 10 – 18
Monday closed

Moderna Museet website

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Exhibition: ‘Gilbert & George: Jack Freak Pictures’ at Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 25th February – 22nd May 2011

Gilbert & George standing in front of Metal Jack (2008) from the series Jack Freak Pictures on show at Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Photo: Fred Dott © Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Fred Dott

“We are unhealthy, middle-aged, dirty-minded, depressed, cynical, empty, tired-brained, seedy, rotten, dreaming, badly-behaved, ill-mannered, arrogant, intellectual, self-pitying, honest, successful, hard-working, thoughtful, artistic, religious, fascistic, blood-thirsty, teasing, destructive, ambitious, colourful, damned, stubborn, perverted and good. We are artists.”

Gilbert & George, 1980

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘The Regent Theatre’ series 1991

May 2011

After undertaking an Issues in Art Conservation subject for my Master of Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne I have become more aware of the fragility of my black and white fibre-based prints and negatives. I have therefore decided to scan my medium format negatives (taken on my trusty Mamiya RZ67) and made during the years 1991-1997, to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever.

These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people that surrounded me. As such they form part of life – of Melbourne, of Australia and of humanity in general. The preservation of such moments in time are vital to the continuing enrichment of culture. See more of my early black and white photographs on the Marcus Bunyan black and white archive 1991-1997 page.

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my store web page.

1991

The Regent Theatre series

The photographs of the dilapidated Regent Theatre in Collins Street, Melbourne were taken with the permission of the National Trust after the theatre had been closed for 21 years on an open day when the theatre was open to the public. The series formed part of my first solo exhibition Of Magic, Music and Myth held in 1991 at a hairdressing salon in High Street, Prahran, Melbourne. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Arts from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Coronation from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Exit from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Music and Light from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Music from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Nocturne from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Six-coned speaker with pillars from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Stairs, bannister, bowl and pillars from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Twin pillars from The Regent Theatre series
1991
Vintage gelatin silver print
© Marcus Bunyan

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive 1991-1997

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Exhibition: ‘André Kertész – Retrospective’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 26th February – 15th May 2011

Many thankx to the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom
1917
Gelatin silver print

André Kertész (American born Hungary, 1894-1985) 'Fork' 1928

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Fork
1928
Gelatin silver print

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
 Elizabeth and I
1933, printed in the 1960s
Gelatin silver print
25.3 x 17.5cm
Collection of Sarah Morthland, New York

André Kertész.  'Distortion No. 200' 1933

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Distortion No. 200
1933, printed c. 1938/1939
Gelatin silver print
34.4 x 25.7cm
Courtesy of Klever Holdings

André Kertész is possibly the most photographic of all photographers: he sought out the play of light and shadow; he liked the concentration and overlapping of forms, of moments; and in the everyday, in banality, he recognised poetry, beauty, and even, for all his innate modesty, the “sublime.” Kertész is a photographic poet and seer, for whom it was long difficult to break into the market precisely because of his rich, chiseled iconography.

André Kertész (Budapest 1894 – 1985 New York) supported Brassaï, inspired Henri Cartier-Bresson, is considered one of the founders of photojournalism, and introduced stylistic elements into photography that can still be found in works by contemporary photographers. At heart, he was a photographer and artist in equal measure, poetic, probing, vital, independent in thought and actions. In a word, he was a master of photography, whose long period of production was very influential. Nevertheless, it took a remarkably long time for his special abilities, his poetic experimental version of photography, to find recognition in the history of photography. The three locations where he lived (Budapest, Paris, New York), his freedom, his form of “contemplative photography,” as Roland Barthes characterised it, made quick reception and categorisation of his work impossible. Today, more than twenty-five years after his death, he is recognised and considered to be a central photographer of the twentieth century who crucially enriched the language of photography.

With around 250 photographs and countless magazine contributions, the retrospective at Fotomuseum Winterthur on view until May 15, 2011, allows a comprehensive view of his work. The chronological order and the major themes show what it is that makes up his photographic practice: his unique methods (in photographic postcards, in distortions), his editorial engagement (for example, in the volume Paris vu par Kertész, 1934), his passion for experimentation (with light and shadow), and the evocation of emotions, above all of melancholy and loneliness. Periods that have remained neglected or unexplored until today (his life as a soldier from 1914-1918, for example) are reassessed, and juxtaposed with the development of photojournalism in Paris and the distribution of his pictures in the media, with which he earned his living.

André Kertész liked to characterise himself as an “eternal amateur.” But what a virtuosic “amateur” he was; what virtuosic visual language he employed his entire life to capture the poetry of the everyday! His photographic production was closely connected to his life and psyche. Even when he seemed to be documenting something, he let himself be guided almost exclusively by feeling, by instinct, from his soul. This resulted in a body of work that he liked to compare to a “visual journal”, and about which he said, “I have never just ‘made photos’. I express myself photographically.”

Text from the Fotomuseum Winterthur website

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Satiric Dancer
1926
Gelatin silver print

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Peintre d’ombre, Paris (Shadow painter, Paris)
1926
Gelatin silver print
© ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine / Donation André Kertész

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Bastille, Rue de Lappe, Paris
1926
Gelatin silver print
© ministère de la Culture / Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine / Donation André Kertész

André Kertész. ' Self-Portrait' Paris, 1927

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
 Self-Portrait
Paris, 1927, printed in the 1970s
Gelatin silver print
25.4 x 20.3cm
Courtesy of Estate of André Kertész, New York

André Kertész.  'Arm and Ventilator' 1937

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
 Arm and Ventilator
1937, printed in the 1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 26.7cm
Collection of Eric Cepotis and David Williams

André Kertész.  'Washington Square' New York, January 9, 1954

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
Washington Square
New York, January 9, 1954
Vintage gelatin silver print
12.7 x 9.2cm
Collection of Leslie, Judith and Gabrielle Schreyer